Gardening this Month

Yeah, I know. You’re probably still eating turkey in every imaginable form and trying to polish off the last of those pumpkin, pecan, or mincemeat pies. Now what? Well, get off your fanny and go outside and do some serious gardening. How much TV can you really enjoy, anyway? Huh?

Serious gardening includes pulling the last of those weeds, pulling anything out of the veggie bed that has “bit the dust,” trim back and clean out those beds where the plants all got a little too cold, add compost and/or mulch to all the beds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. See? There’s plenty to do. It’s not the fun stuff necessarily, but it has to be done in order to be ready for the fun stuff next spring.

In case we haven’t had our first freeze by the time this goes to press, remember that your plants (especially the tropicals) need protection because frost can seriously disfigure or even kill some of them. Covering the plants with old sheets or some of the nursery fabrics like Gro-web can provide an added 3-5 degrees of protection and many times that’s all you need. It’s best not to use plastic to cover plants because the cold will go right through it and kill any of the leaves that touch the plastic. If you’ll put a layer of cloth over the plants and then the plastic, you’ll be OK, however. If/When the severe cold weather comes again this winter, you can even put a drop light or a string of the larger-sized Christmas lights under the cloth to add a little heat. It doesn’t take much…just enough to keep it above freezing under the cover. If you have citrus trees, you don’t normally have to cover them until the temperature is gonna drop to about 25 degrees or less. Most other deciduous trees have already dropped their leaves by now.

But remember now, many perennials are SUPPOSED to freeze back to the ground every year. That’s part of their life-cycle. It’s OK. Don’t fret about it. After they’ve frozen, you may go ahead and prune off the dead stuff down to about 2-3 inches from the ground and put the cuttings in the compost pile. You don’t have to cut the dead stuff off now, however. Birds can roost in it this winter. If you have some mulch lying around, pile it over the stubs about 5-6 inches deep and just sit back until next spring. No problem.

Foxglove

Foxglove is one of the prettiest flowers you’ll ever see. While it is technically a perennial in most of the world, it’s not here in Texas. Here, it’s an annual. If you can find them, plant 4-inch or 5-inch containers now and the plants will have lots of flowers and be much larger than those planted in spring, and they will be much less expensive. Foxgloves grow during winter to produce huge rosettes by March. As soon as warm weather comes, the plants will send up 3- to 5-foot spikes of pink, white, or purple flowers. You can plant them behind other fall annuals. Plants will shoot up in early spring and add some much-needed early height to the early spring perennial bed, then will fade with the first warm days of June.

The Veggie Bed

If you planted any cole crops such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, or cabbage, watch out for cabbage worms on them. You’ll see holes in the leaves if you have them. Spray with Bt or Spinosad and be sure to follow label instructions.

Don’t do any more pruning now. You might cause the plant to put on a flush of new growth and then it’ll freeze and you might lose it. You can prune severely next spring after all danger of frost is gone.

Poinsettias

If you have your Christmas poinsettias already, you need to be sure that you keep the soil moist. You should check it daily because the humidity in the house is pretty low when the heater is on and will dry out the soil pretty quickly. As Dr. Parsons pointed out in a recent article, the easiest way and probably the safest way is to add 3-4 ice cubes to each pot. It’s easy to do, won’t drown the roots, and you won’t have a mess on your hands. Like most other things in gardening, more is not better. 3-4 in a one-gallon pot is plenty if you do it every day.